Pelargonium zonale, var. quadricolor

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast red
• upright 1.56 : 1
• published 1854
• Plate 331

Not a catalogue entry but a way of looking: how to stand, what to notice, how the line was cut, when it flowers, where it came from, who made it — and then the poems and the classics that taught China to see the same flower. Read the twelve in order and the plate opens.

1. 01

   First Look

   凡画山水，意在笔先。

   —— 唐·王维《山水论》

   In painting, the intention precedes the brush.

   The sheet is vertical: the eye climbs and settles in the upper half. Let the plant stand before you look for detail. Then step in close: watch where colour meets line, and whether the line ever breaks. Third, find where the orange is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.

2. 02

   Name and Thing

   The binomial is Pelargonium zonale: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. The genus name Pelargonium: Pelargonium comes from pelargos, the stork, for the beak-like fruit. The Chinese name 天竺葵 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 19.8% of the sheet, foliage 15.0%, the cast red with a second note of yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Garden annuals and low perennials: many small, brilliantly coloured flowers to a stem, with leaves palmately lobed, pinnate or entire — the mainstay of the Victorian bedding scheme. Filed under orange — an amber orange, built in washes from a pale ground. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.

4. 04

   Composition

   Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.56 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant takes about 35% of the sheet, centred near the centre — the easy measure most florists kept to. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.

5. 05

   Line and Colour

   In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful.

6. 06

   Season

   Late spring to early autumn, June through September; under glass they could be had from March. The year 1854 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The plate records ten days of peak; the other three hundred are leaf, fruit and rest.

7. 07

   Provenance

   Gathered from everywhere by plant hunters and the glasshouse trade: pelargoniums from South Africa, campanulas from European mountains, lobelias from North America, fuchsias from Chile. The localities on the plate are those of a century ago; plants travel and places change their names.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “L'Illustration horticole” was drawn by Charles Antoine Lemaire and published 1854-1896. This plate is Plate 331. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   春色满园关不住，一枝红杏出墙来。

   —— 宋·叶绍翁《游园不值》

   Spring cannot be shut inside a garden: one branch of apricot reaches over the wall.

   The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the orange the corolla becomes its resting point.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    会心处不必在远，翳然林水，便自有濠濮间想也。

    —— 南朝宋·刘义庆《世说新语·言语》

    Where the heart understands, distance is not needed: a screen of trees and a little water, and the mind is already by the River Hao.

    China had its own gardening literature — Chen Haozi's Hua Jing on courtyard planting — which, like European bedding, brought wild plants down to human scale. You need not parse every word: take the line, and the flower acquires a second face.

11. 11

    Symbolism

    Bedding plants carry no imperial weight; they mean the everyday — window sill, border, festival, gift. Victorian floriography grew up among exactly these flowers. This plate leans orange, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1854 gave a whole day to a single flower.